Skepticism

EVENTS

No, the Republicans definitely are not neo-Nazis

I know what you’re thinking. You’re seeing recent remarks from Republican presidential front-runners, and thinking that they sound an awful lot like Nazis. I must point out, in the interest of accuracy, that this is not true.

According to Washington Post reporter Philip Rucker, who was also present, Carson said of Syrian refugees: If there’s a rabid dog running around in your neighborhood, you’re probably not going to assume something good.

See? If Carson were being fascist, he would have compared the Syrian refugees to disease-ridden rats. Rats, not rabid dogs. We all like dogs, so he was actually saying something nice about them. Except for the rabid part. Maybe he’s suggesting we should get the refugees shots and health care?

Certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy, he added. We’re going to have to do things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.

Trump would not rule out warrantless searches in his plans for increased surveillance of the nation’s Muslims, Yahoo reported Thursday.

He also remained open toward registering U.S. Muslims in a database or giving them special identification identifying their faith, the news outlet added.

Warrantless searches just means that we’ll follow the Harris plan for screenings (and we all know that Sam Harris is such a liberal fellow…), we’ll just be expanding them from the airport to everywhere, any time.

And the “special identification” will be tasteful, as all things Trump are. Perhaps some armbands with an elegant crescent symbol on them? Maybe they’d even be included in Ivanka Trump’s Lifestyle Collection. They’re gonna be BEEEYOOOTIFUL and YUGE (aiding in identification). Nothing like what the Nazis did.

And they’d even be fashionable. As everyone knows, Nazis never knew anything about style.

Warrantless searches just means that we’ll follow the Harris plan for screenings (and we all know that Sam Harris is such a liberal fellow…), we’ll just be expanding them from the airport to everywhere, any time.

“Have you actually read Harris’ words directly or are you parroting the criticisms from biased people who unfairly interpret what Harris says to make him sound like a racist poopyhead?” (<—paraphrased from Harris sychophant who popped up on my FB wall a few days ago and accused me of not having read Harris' writings before judging him, which is fucking ridiculous, bc I read Harris' back and forth with Bruce Schneir, as well as Harris' comments justifying torture under certain circumstances, as well as his comments about why there aren't as many women in the atheist movement as there are men-I'm well aware he's a racist, sexist, torture apologist).

@2 I had a similar experience. I hadn’t read Sam Harris, though. He told me read him, so I read it. It was even worse than I thought. This same fellow defended Hitchens for wanting to go into Iraq and kill Muslims not because he hated Muslims but because he hated Islam, which totally makes it better.

well I have one criticism in the post. The nazi did what they were doing to protect “the fatherland” that is very different from what we are doing. We are fighting the war on terror stuff to keep “the homeland ” safe. that’s a very different thing completely different does not even sound the same it is spelled different even!
uncle frogy

My partner actually spent quite a bit of time talking me down from immediately seeking asylum in Germany the first time I read Trump’s campaign page. It wasn’t so much that he’s anti-immigrant, it’s that his ONLY position was against immigration. He had no described position on the economy or foreign affairs or global warming or even abortion and gay marriage. The ONLY thing he had to say was “Immigrants (subtext, Mexicans) are bad.” That freaked me out.

My partner spent some time trying to convince me that Trump, while possibly desiring to be Hitler, couldn’t actually do it because the economy in the US was actually pretty good and therefore people weren’t desperate enough to accept the sorts of social changes that allow Naziism to happen.

It was only later that I remembered the last time the US had a serious flirtation with fascism: the 1950s. The 1950s, a period of unprecedented economic growth and when the US had irresistible power. And still went fascist, although they did return fairly quickly. Now I’m scared again.

George Takei is reaching out to the bigots who are pushing for refugee internment camps:

Actor and activist George Takei on Wednesday invited the Virginia mayor refusing to offer state assistance to Syrian refugees to be his personal guest to a new Broadway musical based on Takei’s family’s experience in a Japanese-American internment camp.

Roanoke Mayor David A. Bowers cited the historical precedent of President Franklin Roosevelt’s “sequester” of Japanese “foreign nationals” after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in cutting assistance to Syrian refugees in his state. Bowers is a part of a growing and vocal contingent of American state and local lawmakers who want to stop all refugee migration into the U.S. […]

“The internment (not a ‘sequester’) was not of Japanese ‘foreign nationals,’ but of Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens,” he wrote. “I was one of them, and my family and I spent 4 years in prison camps because we happened to look like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor. It is my life’s mission to never let such a thing happen again in America.” […]

“Mayor Bowers, one of the reasons I am telling our story on Broadway eight times a week in Allegiance is because of people like you,” Takei wrote. “You who hold a position of authority and power, but you demonstrably have failed to learn the most basic of American civics or history lessons. So Mayor Bowers, I am officially inviting you to come see our show, as my personal guest. Perhaps you, too, will come away with more compassion and understanding.”

And yet another rightwing dunderhead says stupid stuff about refugees, and about Muslims in particular:

Rhode Island state Sen. Elaine Morgan (R) wrote in a Tuesday email to a constituent and her fellow state senators that if the U.S. accepts refugees from Syria, they should be placed in refugee camps.

“I do not want our governor bringing in any Syrian refugees. I think our country is under attack. I think this is a major plan by these countries to spread out their people to attack all non Muslim persons,” she wrote in the email, according to Rhode Island television station WPRI. “The Muslim religion and philosophy is to murder, rape, and decapitate anyone who is a non Muslim.”

She added that if the U.S. does take in Syrian refugees, “we should set up refugee camp to keep them segregated from our populous [sic]. We have veterans in the streets starving, alcoholics, drug addicts. I can see taking [Syrian refugees] in, but keeping them all centralized – it sounds a little barbaric, but we need to centralize them and keep them in one central area,” Morgan said.

Two Syrian refugee families who had been approved to be moved to the United States and were scheduled to arrive in Indianapolis on Thursday have been officially told they are not welcome.

The letters also told Exodus Refugee Immigration Inc. and Catholic Charities Indianapolis to notify its national resettlement agencies that all subsequent arrivals be suspended or redirected to other states.

One of the families has been has been waiting in Jordan for three years before getting approval to move to the U.S., according to the New York Times. The family of three will be resettled in New Haven, Conn., the Times reports.

Mike Pence is a christian homophobe, so perhaps we should not be surprised that prejudice and unfounded fears are his default mode.

Regarding Trump and the special identification for Muslims, I assume Trump would corner of the market on whatever this new version of identity was, and then he would charge Muslims a lot for the privilege of wearing it.

More detail on the anti-Syrian-refugee bill just passed in the House of Congress (see comment 16).

The House voted 242-183 Thursday morning to “pause” the process for refugees coming from Iraq and Syria, a vote showing Republican fear and xenophobia. No Democrats voted with Republicans, a show of solidarity with their President and just good sense.

The legislation creates more hoops for refugees to jump through. Hoops that are unnecessary given the multiple hurdles they are already required to clear. It would “require the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Intelligence Agency to certify that each Syrian and Iraqi refugee admitted to the U.S. poses no threat to the country.” […]

Uh-oh. This is not good. Contrary to other reports, the vote to pause the Syrian refugee program really does look veto-proof:

Dozens of Democrats joined Republicans as the House passed the measure 289-137. That margin exceeded the two-thirds majority required to override a veto, and it came despite a rushed, early morning visit to the Capitol by top administration officials in a futile attempt to limit Democratic defections for the measure.

BREAKING NEWS: With a veto-proof majority, the House just passed a bill to pause the Syrian refugee program.

Oh, that is heartbreaking. I wish there was some way to undo this.
—
And Tony? I just about wrenched my neck whipping my head back to re-read what you wrote, so well did you parrot the Harris fan. I thought I was in an alternate universe for a moment!

It should be remarked that waves of oppression of minorities do often involve a legitimate attack by someone of that “group” (however tenuous the connection is, such as being muslim) so I’m totally unsurprised, though sickened.

sugarfrosted@20: I get where you’re coming from, but there doesn’t have to be any link between a group and terrorism for the Trumps of this world to make their lives miserable. There were no terrorist attacks from Jews in pre-War Germany, and although ISIS was behind the Paris attacks, the Syrian refugees, the people Trump and Carson are demonising, are the people running away from ISIS. As far as I am aware, there is not a single act of terrorism that has been attributed to Syrian refugees. Frankly, by their own logic, Trump and Carson would be better off abusing the legal rights of people from Ireland (IRA/Loyalists) or Germany (Baader-Meinhof)…or America (Symbionese Liberation Army, Weathermen, Unabomber, anthrax mailings, abortionist killings, Oklahoma City…)

Next could be pink triangles for anyone who is too flamboyant. Next they’d probably have to take back that scarlet letter A from us and put it on anyone seeking birth control pills or an abortion, as well.

the Syrian refugees, the people Trump and Carson are demonising, are the people running away from ISIS

Not only that, but as the Great Repository of Internet Wisdom reminds us, Daesh’s main source of income is the racketeering of the people living on its territory: the more refugees leave Syria to live in the Western World, the weaker Daesh becomes.

But of course, Trump and Carson don’t want Daesh to become weaker: it’s too convenient a boogeyman, and beside, for the West’s far-right, Daesh is merely a competitor: in their eyes it’s the constitutional republics where the rule of law takes precedence over the whims of the princes which are the enemy that must be wiped out.

Being a PKDick fan I’ve been waiting for Amazon’s version (streaming video) of Man in the High Castle.
With all the Nazi simile to our current Rethuglican candidates, make me fear MItHC may be prophetic.
ispired to write this “warning” based on a review I just read of MItHC. spooky.

Current poll numbers for Carson+Trump are less than 50% of likely Republican voters. So, assuming that the other Republican voters are people who wouldn’t vote for either of them no matter what, it is unlikely that either will win the nomination. One of the conventionally insane Repubs will get the nomination instead. However, it is not clear to me that this is true. If the field were narrowed to, say, Carson and Rubio or Trump and Cruz, would Huckabee voters really go for Rubio or Cruz rather than Trump or Carson? It’s looking to be an interesting election, yeah, as in that kind of “interesting”.

BREAKING NEWS: With a veto-proof majority, the House just passed a bill to pause the Syrian refugee program.

Can I indulge in a little conspiracy theory thinking for a moment? Well, too bad, because I’m going to anyway.

I sometimes wonder whether the anti-immigrants’ main objective isn’t to ruin US cities. Cities thrive on immigrants. Compare NYC in the 1970s to now. What changed? Massive immigration revitalized the cities. Lest you think I’m just a nut case for suggesting this, let me point out that several mayors have said that they specifically welcomed refugees to their cities because of this effect and very much wanted as many Syrians as they could get. So it’s a recognized thing.

Now, where do Republicans get their votes? The suburbs and rural areas. Even in red states, cities tend to go blue or at least purplish. So it is not in the Repubs interest to improve the quality of life in cities, which will only result in more people moving to cities and being brainwashed by the evils of public transportation, parks, and neighborhoods with people who don’t look just like them. What can the Repubs do to destroy cities without appearing to? Well, keep them from getting the immigrants they need is one thing.

So, are the Repubs keeping immigrants, asylum seekers, etc out out of hatred for foreigners or hatred of US-Americans? Oh, well, it can be both.

I really want to be pissed off at this post, and criticise the alarmism of it, but I’m finding it hard to make a case that isn’t just, “it would be really, really bad if that was an accurate comment, so I’m not going to believe that it is. So there.”
I don’t understand how there can be any support for these kinds of policies. I mean, “you’re a nazi,” is the #1 comment for any instance of, “you want or believe something that scares me.” How do people manage to hold them up as the big bad at the same time as emulating them? It’s bizarre and horrifying.

As far as I am aware, there is not a single act of terrorism that has been attributed to Syrian refugees. – chrislawson@21

One of the Paris terrorists had passed through the Greek island of Leros. He had a fake Syrian passport in the name of “Ahmad al-Mohammed” – and according to a report I’ve seen the dead murderer has been identified by his fingerprints as the person who passed through Leros. This may well be deliberate tactics on the part of Daesh: they aim to make it impossible for Muslims and non-Muslims to live together, and as someone said above, they extort money from the local population, so it infuriates them when any escape. The likes of Trump and Carson and their European counterparts, are in a de facto alliance with Daesh: each serves the aims of the other.

Incidentally, the French government has, along with other security measures, banned all street marches – which will include that planned at the end of the climate change conference that we all know will fail to produce anything approaching an adequate response to this far greater threat than the scumbags of Daesh. I’m sure Hollande and his cronies are genuinely appalled at the terrorist attacks – but after all, why waste a perfectly good crisis?

In the beginning he also spews some lies about Hollande closing the French borders to refugees.

“When Chipotle had an outbreak of E. coli just recently, what did they do? They closed all the Chipotle restaurants,” Huckabee said. “I mean, how many gallons of tainted milk do we tolerate before we say, ‘take it off the shelves?’”

[. . .]

“If we take millions of gallons of tainted milk because a few people get sick, does it make any sense that we would say, ‘well we’re going to bring in tens of thousands of people, we have no idea who they are,’” he said. “We don’t know if they’re ISIS members who are sneaking in with the real refugees.”

Meanwhile, we have these liberal intellectuals who are hyper-focused on fighting “political correctness” and general progressive movements on campuses, while the country at large is seething with hard right wing authoritarianism that is far more a danger to civil society, freedom, and democracy than trigger warnings ever could be.

Our liberal establishment is corrupt to the point of being useless.

Dershowitz just cried about progressive fascism all over the universities, while an actual fascist is the front-runner for the GOP nomination– and just called for registering members of a religious minority!

Republicans can’t be neo-Nazis, because no True Neo-Nazi would ever support Israel so enthusiastically.
Republicans can’t be regular Nazis, because regular Nazis had a charismatic leader.
Republicans can’t be fascists, because that would require making trains run on time, which is too socialist for their tastes.

you know, some days I’m worried about the world sliding down into global fascisma nd this time the former allies who liberated us from Hitler are the ones who are leading the way…

Pretty much, yeah. One reason I don’t say, “Fuck it, let the US go fascist if it wants” and vote Trump on my way to Canada is the knowledge that if the US goes fascist the world is screwed. Who can militarily beat the US and force it to return to democracy if it loses it?

Fuckabee also compared refugees to a sack of peanuts. “If 5 peanuts in that 5 pound bag of peanuts is poison, wouldn’t you toss the entire bag?” The answer, to that isolated hypothetical, would of course be “Yes, toss it all”. Fucky is just trying to lure us away from considering the implications, and the false analogy of refugees as peanuts, and the ratio embedded. Yeah, a single terrorist might slip through, disguised as a refugee, and may be able kill somebody. Is that risk really proper justification for sending thousands to slow agonizing starvation, disease, poverty, anguish? Tossing a bag of legumes is different than tossing people, and says Fuckabee is inhuman, disguised as a person, but a cold heartless wannabee human.
Fuckabee needs to reread that book from that holy person he worships, who had a few things to say about feeding the hungry and welcoming the homeless.

Fuckabee also compared refugees to a sack of peanuts. “If 5 peanuts in that 5 pound bag of peanuts is poison, wouldn’t you toss the entire bag?”

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

Around 0.9% or more of the American population is in prison, and an additional 1.9% are on probation or on parole.

In a sack of peanuts, assuming “sack” implies shelled peanuts, there are about 150 peanuts per pound. So a five pound bag with 5 poison peanuts would be 0.66% dangerous.

This leaves us with two conclusions:
1. Huckabee believes that you can be significantly better people than the general American public and still not deserve getting into America because you are brown.
2. Huckabee wants both immigrants and all of America to just be tossed so we can all just start over.

Honestly, considering that Huckabee is a fanatical Christian who loves him some apocalypse cheerleading, either one is plausible to me.

re 49:
+1, I too have seen that map at several sites, so highly probable fact based. Better than the similar map from Carson, who moved NE states into new positions. Vermont lying sideways between NY and NE, where Conn should be. Made no sense how such a map could be released from a campaign group.
ME and NH make sense to be anti-refugee, given their Rethuglican leanings but Mass is inconceivable. They didn’t ask me (as a resident of Ma), and I was unaware of any polls about it. I guess “representatives” just guess what their people would think and then run with it till election time. Even with that, still baffled that we wouldn’t have elected people with empathy, for people, regardless of cultural heritage.
Times like this brings Prof Farnsworth quotes to mind. (google ’em)

Faced with increasing scrutiny about whether Mr. Carson […] was capable of leading American foreign policy, two of his top advisers said in interviews that he had struggled to master the intricacies of the Middle East and national security and that intense tutoring was having little effect.

“Nobody has been able to sit down with him and have him get one iota of intelligent information about the Middle East,” said Duane R. Clarridge, a top adviser to Mr. Carson on terrorism and national security. He also said Mr. Carson needed weekly conference calls briefing him on foreign policy so “we can make him smart.”

Mr Clarridge was one of the individuals convicted in the Iran-contra scandal. He lied in sworn testimony to Congress.

The article goes on to note “Mr. Carson so far has only one paid national security adviser, Robert F. Dees, a retired Army general on the staff of Liberty University in Virginia.”

Right. So his one paid “national security” advisor is at Liberty “University”, one of his principal volunteer advisors is proven liar, and Dr Carson himself hasn’t a clew and, possibly, isn’t capable of getting one.

Does anyone have any strategic, or other, suggestions for Facebook? I think that I’m doing OK so far but thought I would see what people think and this post seems like a good place for a question. I recently started using it again and when the spike in bigotry and xenophobia started I started responding with different intensity or approach depending on how explicit/implicit or overt/covert it is.

*I have posts passively (as in not pointed at anyone in particular) pointing out:
-That treating all refugees like they might be terrorists is bigotry and xenophobia and that this would be similar to treating all pro-life people or right-wing people (referencing recent theater shooting) like they might be terrorists
-That refusing to let refugees into the country is cowardice
-That Trump is essentially a Neo-Nazi,
-That many of my “friends” appear to be bigots and xenophobes.
-That politicians (emphasizing democrats because it seems unusual) that are speaking about the Japanese internment are examples of how genocide starts

* I am actively:
-Questioning (without gratuitous aggression, from my perspective) one person philosophizing about vilification between friends by trying to understand what they mean by “vilification”. It seems to be coming down to publicly pointing out racism/bigotry and xenophobia might be abusive criticism and reputation smearing, but they have not explicitly said it yet.
-Posting links to the wikipedia articles on christian terrorism and right-wing terrorism in response to people posting about “all Muslims” or “all the refugees” related content and asking about if I should pretend they are all potential terrorists.

And finally the one that has me asking around here,
-I have done the same with my mother as difficult as that is (my brother is helping) and she has said that she is just going to send them privately to her friends. I’ve asked her how she would prefer I try to discuss this with her on her posts, but there is not much that can be done. She feels censored and that may be the best case scenario there.

Mali is a country with a 90% Muslim population, and it’s Mali’s special forces which assaulted the terrorists and freed the hostages: so here’s the actual anti-terror plan: ally yourself with the non-psychopatic Muslims and fight together against the psychopaths.

re @57:
Fuckabee tweeted:Give up your guns & memorize a Koran verse.
I would really like to reply to that tweet with
“sure, no problem, why not? World without guns would be much safer, surely there’s a verse in that book that is not macabre.
Hey Mr. Huck, your attempt at snark is bitin’ you in the ass. (where your head is)”

“We’re going to have to do things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.”

Perhaps Trump will encourage the Republican Congress to finally appropriate more money for the nation’s railroads. You know, ramp up production of cattle cars. We can’t be ‘resettling’ hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Trump casino limos, can we?

Bob Foster@61, FEMA already has the trains and concentration camps set up and waiting, and with the UN’s fleet of black helicopters on standby. Slight glitch is they all are for gun fetishists, xians, and others Mr Obama supposedly doesn’t tolerate.